In the world of X-Men, can there be a more iconic voice than that of Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm? We couldn’t imagine X-Men: The Animated Series without her, let alone the Disney+ reboot, X-Men ’97. But Sealy-Smith almost missed her chance at reprising the role.
At Fan Expo Canada 2026, Sealy-Smith joined several of her X-Men ’97 castmates and talked about how the beloved show brought her out of retirement.
Alison Sealy-Smith kept deleting her X-Men emails
Following the end of X-Men: The Animated Series, Alison Sealy-Smith returned home to Barbados. Her mother was unwell, and she had planned to spend a couple of years there. Instead, she ended up spending 11 years in her hometown. She was, in her words, ‘out of the business’ for those 11 years.
She was comfortably in retirement when she got an email from a name she didn’t recognize. The email simply said, "Is this the Alison Sealy-Smith who did Storm? Disney is looking for you.” As one can only imagine, she did what any self-respecting human being would do reading such a suspicious email. She deleted it immediately!
A few weeks later, she received another email saying, “No really, they’re going to reboot X-Men. And Disney is looking for you.”
So, she finally called her agent and told them about these scammy emails. Only for her agent to urge her to finally answer the emails. Good thing she did, because Disney may not have waited for her.
Alison Sealy-Smith wasn’t familiar with the X-Men
Sealy-Smith has now become synonymous with Storm. But funnily enough, when she had first auditioned for X-Men, she had no idea who the characters were or what mutants were. The Marvel project was very hush-hush. Casting was done under the working title, Project X. As Sealy-Smith shared at the X-Men: The Animated Series at Fan Expo Canada 2026, she was given a bunch of adjectives to try and describe what these mutants were. It was only when they said the word ‘queen’ that Sealy-Smith was on board.
Having been associated with the character for 30 years now, Sealy-Smith mentioned that she "wouldn’t trade Storm for the world."
It’s very unusual for reboots to bring back the original team and cast, X-Men producer Larry Huston explained at the Expo. But when Disney got the rights to the X-Men, they wanted the cast and crew of the original series to return. This has delighted fans, young and old, and the excitement surrounding the fan response was evident in the cast at the event.
X-Men ’97 recently completed its second season. According to Huston, the next season is in the works and could be released as soon as 2027.
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